I've been teaching myself XNA for a while now and after recently discovering that it's no longer being supported by Microsoft, I'm wondering what the best alternative to XNA is if there even is any. Does anyone have any information on where else to look now that XNA isn't getting updates?
Keeping in mind that I'm going to be using C# as my main language now until I feel comfortable enough to move to C++.
I have a related question. If you make a game in XNA right now, will it not be able to be installed on PCs?
No it still can be. Everything will still work including Xbox Live is what my understanding is. It's just that Microsoft wont be supporting it or updating it anymore
There are a couple of alternatives available including MonoGame, and ANX. Searching to find the MonoGame website just now I also stumbled across MonoXNA, but I hadn't heard of it previously and don't know anything about it. Of the three, I believe MonoGame is the most stable and mature, so I'd suggest taking a look at it if you're not comfortable continuing to use XNA for now.
If you make a game in XNA right now, will it not be able to be installed on PCs?
XNA isn't supported anymore, but thats no reason to jump off the band-wagon. Its still a Fantastic Framework to use for developing games and will work on any PC that has .NET 4.0+ and the XNA Redist installed. (and compatible gpu :P)
My personal feeling is, that when the "720" comes out they will have a new version / platform for us (indie folk) to develop on. I personally cant see why the wont' as Sony has PS4 Indie Confirmed(?).
So, just becuase they stopped supporting it, dosnt mean they are going to kill it anytime soon. Lik eJbAdams said, Monogame used the same framework just 'supported'.
I've switched Xna for MonoGame, originally because I am coding for Windows 8 Store. There's even a beta version of their ContentPipeline in the works.
Another vote for Monogame here - I've been using it for a few months now as a replacement for XNA, and it's really good.
As evolutional mentioned there's a beta of the new content pipeline (otherwise you need the windows SDK as Monogame uses the XNA content pipeline), and there's a DirectX implementation on the way too. Being open source is a big plus too.
I too was disappointed about the death of XNA. I am working on a rather large project that used XNA, and since finding out XNA was getting the axe, I have switched over to SharpDX. I actually prefer working with a lower level interface than XNA. While XNA is nice and convenient I think overall I just prefer the low level API access. You can still use the parts of the XNA API that are timeless, such as the 3D vector math library, but as for the rendering engine, SharpDX provides the same functionality with more flexibility.
Or you could just switch to MonoGame, of course.
